10. United States
America knows how to dish food that hits the spot.
Getty Images
There’s the traditional stuff such as clam chowder, key lime pie and Cobb salad, and most importantly the locavore movement of modern American food started by Alice Waters.
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Cheeseburger — a perfect example of making good things greater.
Chocolate chip cookie — the world would be a little less habitable without this Americana classic.
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All overly processed foods such as Twinkies, Hostess cakes and KFC.
9. Mexico
Mmmmexico.
Courtesy Denis Dervisevic/Creative Commons/Flickr
Amongst the enchiladas and the tacos and the helados and the quesadillas you’ll find the zestiness of Greek salads and the richness of an Indian curry; the heat of Thai food and the use-your-hands snackiness of tapas.
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Mole — ancient sauce made of chili peppers, spices, chocolate and magic incantations.
Tamales — an ancient Mayan food of masa cooked in a leaf wrapping.
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Tostadas — basically the same as a taco or burrito but served in a crispy fried tortilla which breaks into pieces as soon as you bite into it. Impossible to eat.
8. Thailand
Street eats are a Thai attraction. Flip through a Thai cook book and you’ll be hard pressed to find an ingredient list that doesn’t run a page long. The combination of so many herbs and spices in each dish produces complex flavors that somehow come together like orchestral music. Thais fit spicy, sour, salty, sweet, chewy, crunchy and slippery into one dish.
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Massaman curry — a Thai curry with Islamic roots.
Som tam — the popular green papaya salad is sour, extra spicy, sweet and salty. It’s the best of Thai tastes.
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Pla som — a fermented fish eaten uncooked is popular in Lawa and reported to be responsible for bile duct cancer.
7. Greece
Souvlaki is paradise on a stick.
LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
The secret? Lashings of glistening olive oil. Gift of the gods, olive oil is arguably Greece’s greatest export, influencing the way people around the world think about food and nutritional health. Eating in Greece is also a way of consuming history. A bite of dolma or a slurp of lentil soup gives a small taste of life in ancient Greece, when they were invented.
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Olive oil — drizzled on other food, or soaked up by bread, is almost as varied as wine in its flavors.
Spanakopita — makes spinach palatable with its feta cheese mixture and flaky pastry cover.
Gyros — late-night drunk eating wouldn’t be the same without the pita bread sandwich of roast meat and tzatziki.
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Lachanorizo — basically cabbage and onion cooked to death then mixed with rice. Filling, but one-dimensional.
6. India
Sweet and spicy chai tea.
NOAH SEELAM/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
When a cuisine uses spices in such abundance that the meat and vegetables seem like an afterthought, you know you’re dealing with cooks dedicated to flavor. There are no rules for spice usage as long as it results in something delicious. The same spice can add zest to savory and sweet dishes, or can sometimes be eaten on its own — fennel seed is enjoyed as a breath-freshening digestive aid at the end of meals.
And any country that manages to make vegetarian food taste consistently great certainly deserves some kind of Nobel prize. The regional varieties are vast. There’s Goa’s seafood, there’s the wazwan of Kashmir and there’s the coconutty richness of Kerala.
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Dal — India has managed to make boiled lentils exciting.
Dosa — a pancake filled with anything from cheese to spicy vegetables, perfect for lunch or dinner.
Chai — not everyone likes coffee and not everyone likes plain tea, but it’s hard to resist chai.
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Balti chicken — an invention for the British palate, should probably have died out with colonialism.
5. Japan
We meet up with Yumi Chiba to find out how she became one of the most renowned female sushi chefs in Japan.
Japanese apply the same precision to their food as they do to their engineering. This is the place that spawned tyrannical sushi masters and ramen bullies who make their staff and customers tremble with a glare.
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Miso soup — showcases some of the fundamental flavors of Japanese food, simple and wholesome.
Sushi and sashimi — who knew that raw fish on rice could become so popular?
Tempura — the perfection of deep-frying. Never greasy, the batter is thin and light like a crisp tissue.
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Fugu — is anything really that delicious that it’s worth risking your life to eat? The poisonous blowfish recently killed diners in Egypt, but is becoming more available in Japan.
4. Spain
Churros: dough meets chocolate.
Lauren Aloise
Let’s eat and drink, then sleep, then work for two hours, then eat and drink. Viva Espana, that country whose hedonistic food culture we all secretly wish was our own. All that bar-hopping and tapas-eating, the minimal working, the 9 p.m. dinners, the endless porron challenges — this is a culture based on, around and sometimes even inside food.
The Spaniards gourmandize the way they flamenco dance, with unbridled passion. They munch on snacks throughout the day with intervals of big meals. From the fruits of the Mediterranean Sea to the spoils of the Pyrenees, from the saffron and cumin notes of the Moors to the insane molecular experiments of Ferran Adria, Spanish food is timeless yet avant garde.
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Jamon Iberico — a whole cured ham hock usually carved by clamping it down in a wooden stand like some medieval ritual.
Churros — the world’s best version of sweet fried dough.
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Gazpacho — it’s refreshing and all, but it’s basically liquid salad.
3. France
Freshly baked French baguettes — mouthwatering.
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
If you’re one of those people who doesn’t like to eat because “there’s more to life than food” — visit Paris. It’s a city notorious for its curmudgeonly denizens, but they all believe in the importance of good food. Two-hour lunch breaks for three-course meals are de rigeur.
Entire two-week vacations are centered on exploring combinations of wines and cheeses around the country. Down-to-earth cooking will surprise those who thought of the French as the world’s food snobs (it is the birthplace of the Michelin Guide after all). Cassoulet, pot au feu, steak frites are revelatory when had in the right bistro.
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Escargot — credit the French for turning slimey, garden-dwelling pests into a delicacy. Massive respect for making them taste amazing too.
Baguette — the first and last thing that you’ll want to eat in France. The first bite is transformational; the last will be full of longing.
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Foie gras — it tastes like 10,000 ducks roasted in butter then reduced to a velvet pudding, but some animal advocates decry the cruelty of force-feeding fowl to fatten their livers.
2. China
Peking duck — just one of many Chinese culinary delights.
GREG BAKER/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
The people who greet each other with “Have you eaten yet?” are arguably the most food-obsessed in the world. Food has been a form of escapism for the Chinese throughout its tumultuous history.
The Chinese entrepreneurial spirit and appreciation for the finer points of frugality — the folks are cheap, crafty and food-crazed — results in one of the bravest tribes of eaters in the world. But the Chinese don’t just cook and sell anything, they also make it taste great.
China is the place to go to get food shock a dozen times a day. “You can eat that?” will become the intrepid food traveler’s daily refrain. China’s regional cuisines are so varied it’s hard to believe they’re from the same nation. It’s not a food culture you can easily summarize, except to say you’ll invariably want seconds.
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Sweet and sour pork — a guilty pleasure that has taken on different forms.
Dim sum — a grand tradition from Hong Kong to New York.
Roast suckling pig and Peking duck — wonders of different styles of ovens adopted by Chinese chefs.
Xiaolongbao — incredible soup-filled surprises. How do they get that dumpling skin to hold all that hot broth?
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Shark’s fin soup — rallying for Chinese restaurants to ban the dish has been a pet issue of green campaigners in recent years.
1. Italy
Nothing beats traditional Neapolitan pizza
MARIO LAPORTA/AFP/AFP/Getty Images
Italian food has captivated tastebuds around the globe for centuries, with its zesty tomato sauces, those clever things they do with wheat flour and desserts that are basically vehicles for cream. It’s all so simple. Get some noodles, get some olive oil, get some garlic, maybe a tomato or a slice of bacon. Bam, you have a party on a plate. And it is all so easy to cook and eat.
From the cheesy risottos to the crisp fried meats, Italian cuisine is a compendium of crowd-pleasing comfort food. Many people have welcomed it into their homes, especially novice cooks. Therein lies the real genius — Italian food has become everyman’s food.
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Ragu alla bolognese (spaghetti bolognaise) — the world’s go-to “can’t decide what to have” food.
Pizza — mind-bogglingly simple yet satisfying dish. Staple diet of bachelors and college students.
Italian-style salami — second only to cigarettes as a source of addiction.
Coffee — cappuccino is for breakfast? Forget it. We want it all day and all night.
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Buffalo mozzarella — those balls of spongy, off-white, subtly flavored cheeses of water buffalo milk. The flavor’s so subtle you have to imagine it.
Editor’s note: This article was previously published in 2013. It was reformatted and republished in 2017 and again in January 2021.
